The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

China, Copper, and Conservation at Mes Aynak

Afghanistan, as a crossroads of empire and a key stage in
the Silk Road, is dotted with important archaeological sites that go back 5000
years and can provide insights into the evolution of civilizations across Asia
and, in fact, civilization itself.

Most of these sites are beyond the reach of the Afghan
government’s woefully underfunded archaeology department, and within the grasp
of the Taliban and other banditti, who either destroy or loot and sell the
precious pre-Islamic artifacts depending on their iconoclastic or economic
priorities.

Fortunately, an important Afghan archaeological site, Mes
Aynak, resides within a compound defended by 1500 Afghan troops and
administered by a prosperous and capable international entity.

Unfortunately, Mes Aynak also sits on one of the world’s
largest copper deposits, one that the Afghan government has leased for 30 years
in a contract with two major Chinese transnational companies, the Metallurgical
Corporation of China (MCC) and Jiangxi Copper.

Development of the open-pit mine means that sooner or later
the archaeological site at Mes Aynak will disappear into the maw of MCC’s
bulldozers and buckets.

A film by a Northwestern University professor and
documentarian, Brent Huffman, “Saving Mes Aynak” has gone a long way into
alerting international opinion as to the urgency and importance of preserving
the site.It’s available for streaming at
Netflix.The link is here.

Unfortunately, saving Mes Aynak appears to be a daunting
task, one that involves taking on the Afghan government and even the United
States, as well as China.

The Mes Aynak copper bonanza is seen by the Afghan
government as a vital source of revenue.Per the announced contract, the Chinese side will pay a bonus of over half a billion
dollars when the mine commences commercial operations, a big chunk considering
Afghanistan’s total GDP is only $7 billion.The United States sees income from the mine as an important step in
weaning the Afghan government off its reliance on foreign aid (like Southern
Sudan, the Kabul government is a foreign-aid state, with 72%
of its budget coming from overseas sources).

The Afghan government is unambiguously eager to see
construction at the mine begin.It
appears the collection of several hundred photogenic artifacts that survived
the looters (the site was discovered in the 1960s and only secured in 2008 when
the Chinese perimeter went up) for preservation and display at the national museum
has exhausted the government’s interest in Mes Aynak’s archaeological angle.

The United States government, which provided a million
dollars of military funding for the archaeology work, now also maintains a
studied indifference to Mes Aynak.Brent
Huffman told me he contacted the US embassy in Kabul repeatedly for interviews,
but was rebuffed.

The Chinese are usually cast as the heavies in these sorts
of scenarios and saving Mes Aynak from destruction “by a Chinese copper mining
company chasing corporate profits” is the hook for the Indiegogo fundraising
campaign.MCC and Jiangxi Copper also
receive a certain amount of stick in Huffman’s documentary as corrupt,
indifferent, and not too good at running a copper mine, which occasioned some resentful
pushback in Global Times.

However, the Chinese seem to be the ones dragging their feet
on digging up the site.

China’s reticence about ripping up Mes Aynak perhaps has
less to do with its love of archaeology than the fact that the copper project
is more of a geostrategic placeholder for PRC rather than an economic
opportunity.Copper prices have
collapsed since the deal was signed in 2007, and spending hundreds of millions
of dollars to transform Mes Aynak from a windswept waste into a world class
industrial and export center is probably not the highest priority for MCC and
Jiangxi Copper.

Add to the practical difficulties of the site the fact that
the area, although only forty kilometers outside of Kabul, is controlled by the
Taliban.Recently the Taliban, much to
the resentment of the Afghan government and, perhaps, in response to some
financial outreach from China, announced they would “protect” Mas Aynak instead
of shelling it and occasionally murdering people on the road leading to the
site.

The Chinese government, as opposed to MCC and Jiangxi, can
regard Mes Aynak primarily as control over an economic lifeline of the Afghan
government—and a pre-emptive move blocking other interested parties, like the
United States and India—that provides effective leverage for China in Afghanistan
and reach in Central Asia, a region seen as key to the PRC’s national security.

The PRC allegedly paid a $30 million bribe to Afghan
officials to secure the concession and dribbles out “signing bonuses” progress
payments, so the lease agreement remains valid—and the expectation of a $500
million payday at the start of commercial operation, realistic or not, might be
enough to keep the Afghan government on the hook even as the deal drags on.At the same time, China is demanding a
renegotiation of royalty terms and faults the overwhelmed Afghan government for
failure to execute its population relocation, infrastructure, landmine removal,
and matching resource commitments.

It is a point of interest whether MCC resents the furor over
the archaeological site, or welcomes it as another excuse to let the project
and renegotiations drag on to the frustration of an increasingly anxious Afghan
government.

So Mes Aynak sits there, with a contingent of MCC engineers
residing and working or not working in neatly built blue and white portable
structures.

The construction hiatus should provide a golden opportunity
for archaeologists to excavate and document the site but it isn’t happening.

It seems rather absurd that this well-protected, accessible,
and important site should not be the object of intensive archaeological
efforts.

Archaeological work started in 2010, was supposed to be
finished by 2013, wasn’t, and limps along amid widespread indifference by the
copper-centric interests.In 2013, the
Afghan government claimed
75% of the excavation work was complete, which doesn’t quite jibe with the
estimate in Huffman’s film that 90% of the site remained to be excavated as of
2014.

For Afghan archaeologists, their work at Mes Aynak is
hampered by government disinterest, lack of funding, and mortal peril from the
Taliban.As Huffman’s film documents,
the World Bank, for whom Mes Aynak is a key Afghan project, allocated
millions of dollars for archaeological work, but virtually none of that
money has found its way into the hands of the people actually doing the work.

Beyond the various actors pushing for rapid development of
the mine, Huffman speculates that the usual suspects in international art and
archaeological preservation work—like the Getty Trust, which has made
preservation and even duplication of another key Silk Road site, the Dunhuang
caves in western China, a showcase for its conservation efforts—shy away from
Mes Aynak to avoid offending the PRC.

Today, only a skeleton crew works Mes Aynak when the weather
permits.

Based on his information
from Afghanistan, Huffman tells me he fears that the archaeological site
is at
imminent risk of destruction now that the Taliban has shifted from
threatening
the copper project to—supposedly—protecting it. If the PRC indeed cut a
deal with the Taliban it is perhaps an ominous sign that MCC is gearing up to proceed with development of the mine.

Huffman asks interested parties to petition the Afghan
government to declare Mes Aynak a protected site.He also urges support for the Afghan
government’s beleaguered Department of Archaeology, now run by Qadir Temori,
the young man who serves as a focus for Huffman’s documentary, with the
unfortunate caveat that any financial or material assistance that isn’t
hand-carried to Kabul by Huffman will probably vanish.

The “Get
Involved” page at the Saving Mes
Aynak website offers several suggestions and opportunities to participate in
the effort to preserve the site.There
is also a contact form on
the site for anyone seeking to contact Huffman and his team.

Let’s hope the world will get to see more wonders and
knowledge emerge from Mes Aynak, not just copper.

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